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Posts tagged: adventure race

It’s taken me almost a week to get around to writing this article, so apologies to those who have been waiting so patiently for it. I won’t go in to the gory details, so just let me say (to use an Australian colloquialism), I’ve been down with a ‘crook guts’ – after a couple of days at the hospital, all is well now and I’m definitely back on the mend.

Last Saturday, the seemingly mismatched team of which I’d previously spoken – the crazy ang moh, the photographer, the traveller and the cam wh*re – managed to come together like clockwork in the AsiaOne Adventure Race.

My new calling? WTH Roving Reporter

Although we din’t win the overall race, we certainly managed to show that we are more than just a bunch of pretty faces… the OMY Star Blogger team worked our way through a half a dozen different challenges that tested our brain power, strength and endurance.

The OMY Star Bloggers Team

Jerome became our ‘human GPS’, so much so that we did not once need to programme a location into any device. Yet, we did not lose our way at all. His knowledge of Singapore, obscure locations and back streets is quite remarkable!

Jerome was considered as our Human GPS

Having said that, there has been much discussion across social media about what is being referred to as the now infamous ‘Great Fall at Jurong Bird Park’… in short, Jerome took quite the tumble whilst heading to get our picture taken at the Flamingo Pool. Below, courtesy of OMY.SG, is one of the vodcasts of the event, and at around 3:05, you will see and hear a blow-by-blow account of the incident.

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The interview with the team was conducted by yours truly, and I’m thinking that maybe I’ve found myself a ‘new calling’ as a roving reporter. The challenge may be to find more ‘What The Hell’ type of events and activities for which to report.

(In all seriousness, at the time of the ‘Great Fall’, I was very worried for Jerome, as he did tumble quite seriously and did some significant damage to both himself and his expensive camera… and perhaps his pride – thank goodness that he has now recovered well – Jerome and I are very good buddies and it hurt me personally to see him go down like that).

Jerome looks happy but I feel sad after the Great Fall at Jurong Bird Park

Of course, kudos to the rest of the team for everyone’s unique set of abilities… Clara, who managed to reduce a potentially lengthy exercise of Origami down to almost a matter of seconds – what I’m guessing would’ve taken the average ‘non-paper folder’ at least 30-minutes to complete, Clara’s hands moved at the speed of light and required no guidance nor instructions to fold a paper crane identical in structure to the guidelines and the step-by-step pictorial.

How to fold a paper crane in a matter of seconds

Then there was Eunice – successfully climbing a rock wall with shoes that had become almost like ice skates from the puddles of water outside. As the other rock climber on the team, I can tell you that under the circumstances, this was no ‘walk in the park’ challenge.

The activities really tested our physical prowess

My highlight of the day personally, was speeding around the Go-Kart track in the rain, with the ‘pedal to the metal’ – much to the dismay (and perhaps even anger) of the staff, I held nothing back as I manoeuvred my way around sharp corners and S-bends… the drifting that I was hoping to experience was an absolute rush… and the couple of times that I put the kart into a 360-degree spin, although costing me some time on the fastest lap measure, succeeded in pushing the adrenalin up to incredible heights.

Adrenalin Pumped and Drifting at High Speeds

After getting hosed down to try and remove some of the stubborn mud off my clothes, it took me a good half hour to stop the shaking in my hands brought on by the adrenalin rush…

With or without mud, I was adrenalin pumped

Finally, a big thank you to Janet from OMY, who travelled with us as an observer (and photographer) was quite tolerant of our antics, and even joined in the group singing as we travelled from location to location… perhaps it’s saying something about our age, but we were listening to and singing some classic ‘oldies’ – the girls did get a little worried when I began crooning ‘Summer Lovin’ from Grease to Jerome on the drive out to Jerome – I feel blessed that the video cameras were not rolling at that point of the day!!

So what if I get invited to participate in the AsiaOne Adventure Race 4?? – I will be lining up with bells on!! It was such a fun-filled day, and one that I will be unlikely to forget any time soon – I recommend to anybody with a license and is over the age of 25 to apply in 2012… especially any serious ‘What The Hell’ Bloggers – I suspect that each member of our entire team this year had a few WTH moments of their own throughout the day.

OK, so here’s the thing! – When I was first invited a few weeks ago by OMY to be a member of the media ‘Star Bloggers’ team to take part in the AsiaOne Adventure Race 3 which happens this Saturday, my mind – which often works in very mysterious ways – did some very strange things indeed.

Immediately, my hidden desire to one day participate in the popular TV reality show, The Amazing Race (or The Amazing Race Asia) boiled to the surface. Soon after, I started having flashbacks of the most recent instalment of the blockbuster movies, ‘The Fast and the Furious’… However, instead of seeing myself on the streets of Japan ‘drifting’ around sweeping bends, burning rubber while chucking doughnuts and using the handbrake for some radical manoeuvres, my mind was running 100mph trying to consider how I could emulate these skills on the streets of Singapore (without getting myself – or my team – arrested).

The OMY Star Bloggers Team

Obviously, there was absolutely no hesitation in my acceptance to participate in this inaugural event.

The first thing I did, was to go online to check out the event’s microsite, to see what the race was all about. On the home page, they have the following information:

“Form a team of four and pit your team against 91.3 DJs Jeremy Ratnam and Adam on June 11 in sponsored cars. Sort out the clues and complete the challenges in a treasure hunt that calls for your brains, brawn and beauty.”

Let me emphasise – Brains… Brawn… Beauty… well luckily for me, my fellow team members and OMY Star Bloggers have got my back on these critical factors.

As a media representative team, we are not in the running for the very attractive prize pool, but we are definitely in the running to secure ‘bragging rights’. You should know by now, that most Aussies are very passionate about their sports and usually extremely competitive!! I am no exception.

WTH – you may rightly ask… but the way we figure it, we have such a diverse mix of skills we are bringing to the table that we will definitely be a challenge to be reckoned with. We expect to remove the prefix ‘Dys’ completely and end up with a fully ‘Functional’ team.

Before you get too nervous and think that you better stay in on Saturday and tell all of your loved ones to stay clear of the roads, on Tuesday night this week, we attended a pre-race briefing, and my ‘Fast and furious’ delusions were rapidly shot down.

Of course, no event organizers are going to give out sponsored cars to a bunch of ill-bred street racers. It was made quite clear (along with a number of other regulations), that the first rule is to ‘follow the rules’ – the race winner is not determined by the team who arrives at their final destination first. Success on the day, will be measured by a points scoring mechanism as awarded at each of the checkpoints or activities (I think my team can all breathe a sigh of relief).

We were also given two mobile devices by Singtel which will be used in the day, and the kind team from there gave us instructions on how to download and use Apps on these Android devices. Jerome and Eunice have taken them home to charge and familiarize themselves with the technology. We also received a Nikon camera on which Eunice was fully trained on at the briefing.

At this stage, I’d like to offer a huge ‘Thank You’ to my team who were quick to nominate me as ‘Team Leader’ for the OMY Star Bloggers Team – partly because I arrived 30-minutes late to the briefing and the decision was made in my absence. 🙂

The vehicles will be provided by Sime Darby Select, who are the official car sponsors. The other participants all drew out of a ‘lucky’ draw for their car selection – the OMY Star Bloggers and the 91.3 DJ team had already been allocated a vehicle.

Ours is a Volvo XC60 T6! I have not driven a Volvo in my life, so after a quick Google search I found our car – pretty neat huh? I’m not sure if ours will be red, but below is a mock-up with some OMY and star bloggers branding… if you see a car resembling this cruising the streets of Singapore this Saturday, be sure to wave and holler at us!!

Our Hong Kong Travel Blog

In collaboration with omy.sg, the Hong Kong Tourism Board sent ten
bloggers from the Singapore Blog Awards 2010 to Hong Kong to experience the Hong
Kong Dragonboat Carnival, part of the Hong Kong Summer Spectacular Program.

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